Confused about stamp duty land tax?

An article for community led housing groups featuring a link to HMRC's SDLT calculator and a summary of potential traps

For the August 2020 update on Stamp Duty Land Tax please click here.

Stamp Duty Calculator

Stamp duty land tax can be a substantial cost for community led housing groups.  Once you have found a property and know how much you are going to pay for it, you can work out how much stamp duty land tax you will have to pay by using HMRC's calculator found here.

Stamp Duty thresholds

You can see the current thresholds for SDLT here.

Summary of various reliefs

HMRC's website also contains a summary of the various reliefs available – multiple dwellings relief is a specific relief that can be useful for community led housing groups.  Click on here to be taken to the relevant section of HMRC's website.

Potential traps

Since 1 April 2016, if you buy residential property through a company, you pay an extra 3% on the purchase price for stamp duty land tax.  The calculator automatically works this out for you, provided you select the right options.  Learn more about this here.

If you buy a property as a group and then sell individual units to your members, the group will pay stamp duty land tax on its initial purchase and the members will also pay stamp duty land tax on their purchase of their individual units.

There may be ways of minimising this double hit of stamp duty land tax and please contact one of our team for advice.

Related articles -

New higher SDLT rates for community housing (April 2016)

Sources of finance for community-led housing (December 2016)